Broken Doll
by EKBlack
Summary: Yes, a clichéd name...another one of those stream-of-consciousness things that I'm so fond of. Features implied...interestingness! Muraki angst! And much, much more! A companion to Idols I have Loved so Long.
1. ONE

Broken Doll

By Eva_kokaze_black (RhblackY@netscape.net )

Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Yoko Matsushita, not to me. 

All comments, etc., are welcome. A sort of continuance/companion of _Idols I have Loved so Long_. Notify before archiving. Muraki angst, H/T ,T/T, and several other pairings. Excuse any Japanese errors; I read YnM in Chinese. ~_~

****

Broken Doll- **A Yami no Matsuei Fanfiction**

ONE

*

__

No. I yearn upward, touch you close,

Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,

Catch you soul's warmth--I pluck the rose

And love it more than tongue can speak--

Then the good minute goes.

-Robert Browning, "Two in the Campagna"

***

It had begun so long ago that it seemed slightly ridiculous. In his mind it was always only a few weeks ago that he had been born, had grown, had learned like other children the workings of the world. Only yesterday had he met the dark-haired boy who had a penchant for traditional prints. And an hour ago he had died.

He rose from sleep cold and put on his immaculate clothing with great care. Perhaps today he would have better luck. It was gray outside and already drizzles of rain spattered heavily to the pavement and onto countless bright umbrellas. He slipped into his shoes and opened the door, not bothering to lock it as he left.

It was amusing to walk among them, the creatures so like flies, like gnats or ants. So fragile and so very mortal. So _weak_. They were staring covertly at him behind their colorful umbrellas; he wanted to laugh but controlled it, with some difficulty. If he frightened his prey away he would not be the cool precise hunter that he professed to be. That he was hired to be. When the gnats weren't looking he leapt onto the roof of an anonymous house and smirked. The prey approached, foolishly unaware of him. Weak and stupid. So stupid that they walk to their deaths without knowing it. He waited a little longer, and then pounced.

***

"Shidou-kun--"

"Call me Saki, Kazutaka." The boy had such a languid, sweet smile. The smile of a fallen angel. Absolutely gorgeous. 

"Saki." He almost flushed, saying that name. "What is your favorite food?"

"Ah..." the smile never faded. "I eat anything. I like things that are just a bit bitter, though. A little more depth to the flavor, you know."

"Yes."

"What about you, Kazutaka?" They were seated comfortably on silk-covered cushions on the inpeccable tatami, with mugs of tea and a bowl of rice crackers powdered with sweet frosting. "I...I like sweet things...things other people don't like."

Saki's brilliant smile grew. "Really?" 

Kazutaka was having great trouble keeping his face calm; he saw flirtatious tension in the room he was sure that Saki was more than aware of. "Yes." He prayed that someone would enter, would interrupt this sweetly uncomfortable conversation before something happened. He had no idea what _something _was except it was shameful. Shameful. He hated being ashamed. His conscience throbbed. Saki was so insinuatingly friendly that he was sure there was something behind his angelic face, some dark ulterior motive like his father. Father who lusted after everyone. Father who had made this boy before him and his own self on the same day with two different women--merely toys to his insane father. He hated his father. Perhaps this Saki was like his father, oversexed and crazed by his lust. He must be on guard. "I...must go...to the bathroom," he stood and walked as quickly as possible to the near door. 

"Kazutaka," said Saki behind him, questioning, "that's the wrong door." Kazutaka turned scarlet and, keeping his face from his half-brother, ran at the door on the far side of the room, slid it open, and slammed it to in under two seconds. Then he walked, panting, to the bathroom, where he wet a towel and rubbed furiously at his hot face until there was only the slight pinkness of raw skin. He reached over and flushed the toilet as justification of his necessary absence. He must be calm. He must not shame himself again before that demon (he was sure of it now; that insiduous smile covered nothing but a sheer evil desire to see himself shamed). He must be calm. He took a heavy breath and went out.

They were in the garden, at night with the lumious summer insects flitting about them like so many fallen stars. Saki had changed into a yutaka and looked quite damp and wonderfully fresh from his bath; Kazutaka was pointedly looking the other way. _You wolf in sheep's clothing. You monster._ He gripped the banister of the ornamental footbridge they stood on more tightly, wanting to break something. _All you want is my place, you bastard child. You never should have been born._ And at the same time his mind spoke he heard distantly another voice, a woman calling his name between screams of rage. _You monster!_

__

You bastard child!

Created for the devil!

You will bring only evil to the world!

I'll kill you!

***

His mother lay indolent on her couch, caressing his hair with one hand and the silk-thread hair of her currently favorite doll with the other. "Ah, my pretty. My lovely little boy." Her hand which looked clawed with scarlet nails, dagger-length and sharp. "Lovely little Kazutaka." She shoved the doll very ungently at his face so that he stared, half-afraid and half-fascinated, into identical eyes of gray glass. "Meet my other Kazutaka. Say hello, little boy. Say hello." He continued to stare, and her voice immediately became as sharp as her fingernails. "SAY HELLO!" She caught hold of his hair, painfully, and bashed the doll to pieces on his forehead. He cried, as quietly as he could, as she kicked him and slapped him and banged his head against the wall. "You broke my doll! How dare you break my precious! You monster! Created for the devil, you little demon!" _Oh, oh no,_ he thought feverishly as she pummeled him, _this is worse than before, she's going to kill me before she stops..._ Already his vision had gone dark at the edges, and with every cuff he grew more and more tired. 

"What are you doing?" It was that man against the doorframe, "Kuroko. What are you doing?"

"Ah, why are you home?" His mother left him bleeding andwent to his father, throwing arms around the man's neck and chattering happily, like a little girl, of how she had had to rebuke bad little Kazutaka for breaking her most favorite gray-eyed doll. The tall shadow of the man bent and embraced her. Kazutaka, lying with his face turned to the silhouettes of his parents, blinked away the blood trickling from the cuts on his forehead. 

His father came back later and picked him up and put him on the sofa. He watched as his head was bandaged and the bruises on his arms and legs were carefully examined. "You know better than to annoy your mother," said his father, his mouth smelling strongly of beer, "she'd have killed you." He slapped Kazutaka's face, half-rough and half-gentle. Then he had gone, and Kazutaka was in bed and all around him was the darkness.

***

The man's blood lay stilly, in a perfect oblong pool. A few drops had speckled his left shoe, and he leaned down to rub at them with a fingertip. He pretended that the man was Saki, grown, and with a gnash of teeth kicked the body with as much vehemence as he could. The head rolled loosely and smeared the clean edge of the puddle of blood, and he spat at it "I _hate_ you! I _hate_ you!" before leaping off the roof and, with an expressionless face, landed among the wet umbrella-flowers. 

He knew them to be nearby, the purple-eyed man and the boy. After all, they'd once been his prey, and even dead they were connected eternally to him. He climbed onto a slickened lamppost and watched them approach.

END ONE

Notes:Nyargh. What a half-baked effort. "Kuroko"? I mean, come on. The next part prolly won't be coming for a good while, due to school and exams and whatnot. But of course everyone loves these "delve-into-pasts-of-characters" type stuff, eh? As always, review, _review._ I'll love you forever. 0_0;


	2. TWO

Broken Doll

By Eva_kokaze_black (RhblackY@netscape.net )

Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Yoko Matsushita, not to me. 

All comments, etc., are welcome. A sort of continuance/companion of _Idols I have Loved so Long_. Notify before archiving. Muraki angst, H/T ,T/T, and several other pairings. Excuse any Japanese errors; I read YnM in Chinese. ~_~

****

Broken Doll- **A Yami no Matsuei Fanfiction**

TWO

*

__

No. I yearn upward, touch you close,

Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,

Catch you soul's warmth--I pluck the rose

And love it more than tongue can speak--

Then the good minute goes.

-Robert Browning, "Two in the Campagna"

***

He perched on his lamppost and felt as superior to the countless insect-like humans under him huddled beneath their umbrellas as God himself. But the two nearing him, only their upper bodies visible as they sped through the air, were no mere bugs. He licked his mouth and smiled. They were his _prey_. They also hated him, but he did not care about that. The boy had been tortured by him, cursed by him; the man had been the one to kill him, some time ago. When? It seemed an hour or two prior when Tsuzuki had driven that knife into his flesh and killed him, when he'd laughed (disbelieving at the irony of his prey stabbing him to death with the very knife meant for that prey) and felt the lifeblood spilling out of him. And then he did not remember anything until, in the darkness, Oriya's voice. "I don't think he'll come back." After that he was in his cold bed, awake.

They still had not seen him. The boy would be first, he knew. The boy was _special_, like himself. Special and cursed, doomed to a life of killing, a life of madness. The other...he lidded his eyes. The other was beyond special. The other had not surrendered sweetly to him like the boy. He remembered all the delicious bits of rebellion; Tsuzuki fighting him for the boy, Tsuzuki bleeding in the lab, Tsuzuki beautiful under a veil of fresh blood as he drew the knife that had cut open his own skin into Muraki's body, upwards between his two false ribs and into the heart and partially into a lung (being as he was a doctor, Muraki had been more than capable of diagnosing himself as he had been stabbed). Beautiful rose, he thought, and leapt from the lamppost. 

*

As with so many other times, no one noticed Muraki until he had appeared right in front of them. Hisoka gave a hiss and clutched at Tsuzuki's free arm (the other was cradling a huge bag of tea crackers). They both stared as the doctor leered wetly at them, his unnaturally white coat somewhat made more normal by its dampness. "Good day," he said sweetly, as the two shinigami swayed between furiously attempting to kill him and watching him to see what he would do next. They seemed, for the moment, bent on the latter, and so Muraki continued to near them, dashing wet hair from his eyes rakishly. "I've not seen you two for a while." He savoured their fury. In pain, in anger, they were still undeniably _his_. Right now the boy would be seething, possibly grinding his teeth like an enraged young lion. In fact, he could come quite close to reading the boy's thoughts: _I_ knew _it would be him why didn't I warn Tsuzuki it's all my fault again why isn't the man dead_...simply another reason he was so very fond of Tsuzuki; he was so much more unpredictable, so much more mysterious. He shrugged his shoulders luxuriously in his wet clothes and relished the hate in their eyes, the boy as always reminded of the past and in particular of that night under the blooming cherry tree. 

"You don't want to fight now," he told them, knowing that the more he said the more they longed to kill him, "because of _these_." A careless nod at the roiling sea of human hurrying home beneath them. "Because, being the hypocrites that all of you shinigami are, you are leery of killing these worthless creatures."

"You're only human too, Muraki!" The boy made as to lunge at the man, was barely restrained by his companion's hands. The man in white remembered, again, another voice. 

*

They walked home in the rain. She had a small paisley umbrella, he nothing. Both were mostly wet, their yellow uniforms soaked into the color of new mud. "Kazutaka-chan," said the girl presently, upon reaching the gates of a looming house whose lit windows appeared to be glowing eyes in the darkened facade, "d'you want to come home with me instead?" 

Kazutaka sighed at the gates, at the leering face of the house beyond. "No," he told the girl, "I think I'll go. Mother would be angry." He refused to take the umbrella when it was offered to him, waved good-bye to Ukyou, and let himself into the courtyard. The iron bars clanged to behind him, locking him in. For a panicked instant he was sorely tempted to go out and chase after Uykou, convince her to help him run away, to stay with her kind family, anything but go _home_. 

"Ka-zu-_ta_ -ka!" Mother from her doll room. He bit his upper lip and entered.

The ceiling of his room was more familiar to him than his father's face. His head still ached under the bandages, and his limbs felt bruised like crushed fruit, their sap run out onto a dry thirsty sucking mouth. His mother's red-painted lips closing on his skin, biting. _Ukyou_. He thought with no little envy of her parents with their smiling faces, the first signs of lines appearing around their eyes from a life of joy. The father who was an excellent cook, bohemian and fond of bright colors. The mother a policewoman who had shown him her uniform, who had arrested vast numbers of dangerous criminals (according to Ukyou at least). The obaa-san who slipped him candy. His eye sockets ached as though Mother had hit him there too, and to his surprise a string of tears slipped down his cheek. Bitterly the boy thought of his own parents; his father who'd come in again with the nauseating smell of alcohol on his feverish breath as he'd picked up his son from the corner where his wife had thrown the child. His mother with her perfectly shaped face, lovingly applied paints and kohls, her long smooth hair, her skin like that of one of her porcelain dolls, her lashes (darkened) drooping over eyes so bewitching she appeared hardly human. Kazutaka swallowed and tried to roll to his side, sucked in a breath with pain, and returned to lying on his back.

"Hey, Muraki." It was the student behind him, poking with a pen. He glared as best he could at the smile until it went away, turned back, and set his mouth. He already knew the boy. On the first day of the semester he had just entered the classroom to be greeted with something with long dark braided hair hurled at his gut. The hair and other parts of the something eventually sorted themselves out to a boy, dark-eyed, with hair the length most often seen in ancient scrolls. "Hajimemashite," the boy had said after explaining that it had all been an accident, "I'm the new transfe--" before realizing that his addressee had already turned away.

__

Damn, he said to himself as he felt the pen again. And again. Again. Finally he turned and gave the transfer his infamous Look and was terribly disappointed when it failed to elicit more than a winning smile. "_What_ do you want?"

"Just a friendly reminder. You're human too, you know." The mouth smiled but the eyes were grave. "You can make mistakes. You can act like something more than an automaton with top marks." The smile widened. "So let me see your notes, Sensei's been boring me to death for the past half-hour."

*

He was awakened by a hand on his throat, groping. Instantly he was upright, muscles tensed. _Mother_, he thought. It had been a particularly bad night, and perhaps she'd come again, wanting to kill him in his sleep with her deadly lacquered fingernails. But the hand he caught was not clawed; it was warm and _human_, two things his mother's hands never were. He was so startled that he continued to hold the hand for a while before Saki said, in the darkness, "Kazutaka." He quivered; he'd rather have fought his mother than his mad wily demon of a half-brother, determined to shame him. He could endure the welts his mother's nails gave him, could let her beat him to the point of unconsciousness, but he could never stand those insidiously gorgeous hands, the lazily, complacently seductive face. Where his brother was beauty incarnate, Kazutaka knew himself to be literally as ugly as sin. For he knew himself to be a sinner. And this Saki was his tempter, sly asp with the apple that would poison him. But he had no prince to save him, and he was living in no Eden.

"Kazutaka," said Saki again, in his was-it-something-I-said voice. "Are you all right?"

"Fine." He thrust the hands away, not so hard so that it could seem mere irritated sleepiness, and started to lie back down.

"You were making funny noises," said Saki, still hesitant. 

"Go _away_."

He heard the vicious creature sigh, gently (what a liar! cried his mind), and return to bed also. "Good night, Kazutaka." He waited until the soft breathing was even and slipped his legs from under the covers and dropped his heels onto the cool floor. It would be terrifically easy to slide his hands around the boy's neck and squeeze and squeeze until the breath stopped. It would be a kind of pleasure. His hands cupped around his half-brother's neck, feeling the tiny pulsing jump under the smooth warm skin. They were both of a size, but Saki was so soft and passive in sleep that he would be very easy to subdue; Kazutaka's blood churned in his ears as his fingers began to tighten, trembling milimeter by milimeter. 

"Kazutaka?" The eyes were barely open; the thick golden lashes touched the girlishly delicate cheek. "What is it, Kazutaka?" He gritted his teeth. Saki would be no match physically for him. He could continue to throttle his demon. He _should_ continue. But the eyes were fully opened now; he cursed himself for his indecisiveness and forced his hands apart just as the boy said again, entirely alert, "Kazutaka?" A hand crept onto his shoulder, possibly meant to be comforting but to him like the coiling of the fatal Tempter around his hand, trying to pull him into a black life of guilt. He shook it violently off with an expression of digust his brother could not see in the half-dark. "Did you have another nightmare?"

The hand had returned and had been joined by the other; both were on his arms in a gesture of comforting restraint mixed with some apprehension.The gibbous moon outside, through the trees, caught the small beating milk-colored hollow between the collarbones, and Kazutaka's hands wound insanely through the air, wrapping around the neck, with the thumbs lightly pushed into that wondeful glowing hollow of flesh. "It's nothing," he murmured, and bent his head to the other's shoulder, smirking. He had formulated a new plan; he would catch the tempter with its own trap. It was strange that he'd not seen it before.

*

"Indeed," said the man in white, floating out of reach. His good eye glistened with madness or memories (perhaps the madness of memory). 

"How are you still alive?!" The boy and man regarded him with the same odium, the same disgust, the same unconditional hate. "Who saved you? Was it that Oriya man?"

__

Oriya. He chuckled to himself. _You two don't know how much the same you and Oriya are._ "I don't know."

"What?" Both of his lovely victims said at once. They frowned at each other, considering him. "Liar."

"I've been called that before." _I've probably been called every possible thing you can think of before._ "Frankly, I have no idea why I woke up alive. I don't remember anything."

The boy looked almost uneasy, and the man tightened his hand on the small wrist, reassuringly. Apparently some incident had taken place during his amnesia, and apparently it had involved his two victims, together. "Do you two know something about it?" It was too fun to tease them, to watch them flinch and glower. "It's none of your business."

"Come now." He laughed outright. "I shan't--I don't want to hurt either of you right now. I just want to know what happened, just as you do. Maybe I can tell you something about whatever happened to you two as well." He went towards the laboratory, testing to see if they followed. Of course they did, at a distance of twenty meters, bristling with confusion, distrust, desire to see him dead. Fine and well. He had told them the truth, but it depended wholly on them if they believed his story.

END TWO

Notes: What kind of ending is _this_ ?! What _did_ Kazutaka do with Saki? Do we really want to know? _ Thank you kind people who reviewed me last time, hoping that whoever reads this far will review also. *bows* Next chapter: we _really_ delve into Muraki's past. I mean, these two were just a preview. Like earthworms burrowing as opposed to drilling for oil...okay, I think that's enough ramble for now. 


	3. THREE

Broken Doll

By Eva_kokaze_black (RhblackY@netscape.net )

Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Yoko Matsushita, not to me. 

All comments, etc., are welcome. A sort of continuance/companion of _Idols I have Loved so Long_. Notify before archiving. Muraki angst, H/T and several other pairings. Excuse any Japanese errors; I read YnM in Chinese. ~_~

****

Broken Doll- **A Yami no Matsuei Fanfiction**

THREE

*

__

No. I yearn upward, touch you close,

Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,

Catch you soul's warmth--I pluck the rose

And love it more than tongue can speak--

Then the good minute goes.

-Robert Browning, "Two in the Campagna"

***

The two who hated him stood quiet as he opened the doors and turned to face them; the only sound was the water running from the hem of his coat to the polished floor. He started forward, into the laboratory known to both of his victims with great loathing. They were wary, facing him once again. He knew the boy would be debating with his partner in a mental undertone whether to kill the man they hated most now or later. _What could he possibly show us?_ Said the boy's mind, while his lovely green doll's eyes gazed, empty of emotion, at Muraki. _It could be important_, replied the man.

__

This is Muraki here! He's not sane!

But we have nothing better to do. Tsuzuki sounded sarcastic, rather shocking from one so very cheerful. 

"Let's go," he told them, forestalling their thoughts before they could see the sheer stupidity of trusting him, their ultimate nemesis and the man who was responsible for most of their troubles. And they, like the wondefully ignorant beautiful creatures they were, came after him.

The tank was undisturbed from the fire; Muraki knew it like he knew that he himself was alive and breathing. Inside, Shidou Saki slept, his hair floating, ethereal in the laboratory lights. The sight was new to none of the three men, but still each could barely hold in check some violent emotion. Muraki of course longed to drive a long, preferably blunt object through his half-brother's skull; Kurosaki Hisoka cleched his teeth, remembering against his will what had passed there, with Suzaku's cleansing fires and Tsuzuki kneeling begging for death; Tsuzuki Asato himself could see, in his mind, the bottomless black chasm down which he'd fallen in that room when he'd wanted to _die_. He reached for Hisoka's hand and squeezed it, reassuring both of them before asking, in a rigid voice, what exactly Muraki had brought them here to show.

"Be patient, my dear." Muraki wiped his glasses, assiduous as always, on the inside lapel of his coat. He eased them back on and gave a small sigh. He removed three chairs from their places, folded up inside wall-compartments, and propped them out, seating himself first to demonstrate that he had not somehow booby-trapped the furniture to spite them. "What exactly do you two know about me?"

"You're a murderer," said Hisoka immediately. His color ran the tender pink that lined the innermost core of a sliced strawberry; his eyes shone defiant. "You kill innocent people. You--"

"Ah, darling child, I am a mere mercenary. Political intrigues, marital discord...you understand me."

"So I had been some pawn in your 'political intrigues' too?"

Muraki closed his eyes, beaming. "You were for myself, I must admit." He touched the fleshy part of his index finger to his lips, sensually, and chuckled at his guests' expressions. "A minor indulgence."

The boy's face was blanched with anger; another moment and not even Tsuzuki would be able to hold him back. "And, Tsuzuki," said Muraki, languid,"what do you say?"

"I say...I say that you're a terrible man." The violet eyes, though cold, were thoughtful. "I'd want for you to tell us _why_."

"Very good." Muraki gave himself a secret ovation for tact. "That is precisely what I had brought you two here for. Now then. My mother was a collector of dolls; my father a physician."

"We knew that already."

"Doubtlessly so." Oh, he would give them everything. The next words led onto sensitive ground that hadn't been probed for years and were yet picked at daily, like a wound under a bandage; white from lack of sun but paining the body every moment. "She was a savage woman. She beat me regularly." He tapped his fingertips. "My father was a lustful man, like the Greek gods of old; he must have had at least five more children with other women. I of course was a single child. That is, I was a single child until the age of fifteen, sixteen or so." He inclined his chin at Hisoka. "About as old as you--were." The fists, which had relaxed, tightened again. Good. He wanted them alert and goaded like the Spanish bulls after the _picadores_ had done their bloody jobs. 

"My father brought home a boy my own age--he could have been in fact called my older twin. He had been conceived on the same day, that is, and was born a week and two days earlier. A dazzling boy; when we went down the street even the obasan-tachi sitting and chatting before their houses stared. Mother was rather fond of him; she certainly never beat him." He stopped himself; he could taste the words coming more and more bitterly to his tongue. His audience, riveted, straightened when he paused and looked askance, like hunters startled by the sudden appearance of prey. "As for my father, he was indulgent to both of us. But he knew that Saki was never beaten and had had sixteen years of experience bandaging my bruises and wounds. So I leave it to you to decide who he loved more.

"Saki was..." he swallowed, hardly able to keep his face neutral. "I--I hated him. Not only because my father loved him more; not only because my mother never hurt him. He was...he was like my father." Both pairs of eyes watched his every eye-blink; he knew his distress was not escaping them. "He was a devilish boy inside, under the pretty skin. He _was_ a devil! A demon! He was my tempter, my evil tempter..." He had failed. He could see it, the disgusted astonishment in their bodies, in their faces. They could not realize that he was telling them the absolute truth. They could not even trust him in this one thing. No one trusted him. He was unworthy, unworthy of it all, and worse: he knew it.

*

The soft-smelling shoulder rolled so smoothily into the collarbone, hollowed marvellously and proportioned like a Renaissance painting. The breast moving gently under a sea-froth of covers. He passed a hand over the oblong piece of light that came in over his shoulder and fixed on the face of the sleeper, letting his fingers curl around the left cheek, just below the thickness of the eyelashes. "Such a soft thing," he whispered to the light and the face, "such a soft thing." The shallow pulse in the neck was still there, a mere three or five centimeters from his hand. But he did not really desire to kill right now; he told himself severely that it must be the after-effect, the aftertaste; he would rid himself of his unholy burden later. He would now sleep, being tired from the night's exertions. The golden hair lay fine against his face; burying himself half in the pillow and half in the glorious hair, he dreamt.

The mouth under his opened in surrender, every motion like through water; heated but so slow and so violent--well, he was violent. The other lay quivering. He hoped it hurt. He hoped that, out of some kind of demented respect, such a pain at such a time could not be spoken or shown. It was startling to find that this evil sprite was untouched and pure; it almost made him feel guilt. _Ah_, cried his mind, _there it is. He's making you feel dirtier than coal._ He pushed hard, and hoped it hurt.

Awakening, he found the face smiling shyly at him. "Kazutaka."

His conscience stabbed at him. Even looking so innocent there was the ever-present danger from that traitorous face, so beautiful it was repulsive. A surge of disgust rose in him, and he slid from the bed and into his own, not five feet away. The brilliant plan had failed, failed pathetically. He was now fully ensnared by the wicked creature; it must be invulnerable to anything he did to hurt it. Instead he would be the one hurt, as always. He knew very well that no one had ever lifted a hand against his half-brother in sixteen years (that kept the skin perfect); tempters and demons were always outwardly perfect. Inside the boy would be rotten with guilt and torment just he was; inside he would be just as black and hollow as decayed wood. 

"Is something the matter? Did you have another nightmare?" Saki followed his half-brother, and knelt beside the bed.With an emotion more like repulsion than tenderness, he took a strand of the golden hair between his fingers. It was beyond fine; like a puddle of sun-warmed water it slipped in his hand. He vowed to himself that if ever he did kill (no-- _when_ he killed) his beautiful demon, he'd keep the hair. 

*

Ukyou stood under his window when he limped over and opened it; her face was indistinct in the darkness. "Kazutaka-chan," she said, and began to cry. He could do nothing for a moment; he stared, dumbfounded, and then remembered where he was. "Wait there," he told her, and, stealthily, made his way past his mother's door where she had fallen asleep after her wine, down the corridor and the stairs, and through the back door. She was sitting now, having collpased onto her knees. "What is it?" He pried her hands free from her face, urgently, "what is the matter?" She was not a crying girl; in all eight years of their acquaintance she had never wept, even when she had fallen and had twisted her wrist. 

"We're moving away."

Again he was astonished into stillness. Then, "When?" Quietly, or he would begin to cry too.

"In twelve days." She wiped savagely at her face, reddening her nose further. "They transferred Mama to Tokyo perfecture, as sub-lieutenant or something. So she has to go." 

He cursed, and kicked at a pebble, which flew to the depths of the night-shadows and disappeared. With a sob he crouched beside her and stayed there, wetting each other's clothing with tears, until at last she calmed and said, "Let me go." She turned away her face, and before he reached for her had leapt over the wall separating their houses and was gone.

Muraki Kazutaka, aged fourteen, stared at where she had been, where her knees had pushed into the ground, and was silent. "I will find you again," he whispered, his young voice riding a hill and careening into a man's hoarseness before he got up, wiped off his soiled clothes, and walked back to his room. His mother saw him pass her door; she had opened it, and a sickening perfume made him cough and betray himself. "Kazutaka!" 

"Yes, mother?"

"What are you walking about for?" Her pupils were dilated with drink; about her painted eyes and lips there were the faint marks of her rage,beginning to show at last. "Answer me!"

"Ukyou was calling me." He'd learned long ago not to lie; she would know and would make him confess the truth before she beat him, as some kind of justification. 

"And why was she doing that?"

"Because she--" he couldn't rely on his voice to keep steady. "I--she's going to--" A slap cut short what was there of his sentence, and he lay on his side, his cheekbone feeling broken. He let himself weep as he was beaten, the first in many weeks. After she was through (pleased, he thought), his mother draped herself back on her couch and sneered, "Keep yourself away from that little slut, or you'll see worse from me. Just like your father, Kazutaka. Go to your room." He didn't move until she threatened to get up and continue to vent her wrath; then he was slow, and before he closed the door he gave her a glare: _One day, I will kill you for that._

*

They still watched him when his mind had returned; unswervingly, as though they would penetrate to the root of his secrets. "Muraki," said the boy, carefully choosing his words, "thank you." His eyes were not any gentler than they had been, however; his hate was still evident in every line of his body. "I thought I'd never say this to you. But thank you." He started to rise, and the man also.

"Wait!" They were a little amazed at his outburst. "I have not told you the important things yet. Stay--stay, let me finish."

They were exchanging their mind-speech again, the man cupping the boy's hand comfortingly in his. He suprised himself by admitting that he did envy them, and their obvious happiness in each other. "We may come back later," said Tsuzuki at last. "Maybe tomorrow?"

"Very well." Their lovers' pause had given him time to recuperate and regain his coolness. "I shall find you again." And they were gone.

*

In the darkness of his throne-room, Enmadaiou started from his reading of the files on Tsuzuki Asato. The Shokanka kachou was summoned and presented. "Konoe, it's Muraki Kazutaka."

"He--has told?"

"Not yet. They are to see him tomorrow." Enmadaiou's lips twitched in anger. "The fool. He knows very well what we know of him and of everything else. You have our permission to stop their meeting in whatever manner you deem best. Dismissed. "

END THREE

Notes: Eheh...so now we know what Kazutaka did with Saki...or do we? Such is the beauty of nebulous ficcing. *sigh* I guess you could call that "implied incest", then. Grrrrreat. And Kazutaka's little vow to Ukyou...so he was normal at some point, after all. Reviewers, may you live well.


	4. FOUR

Broken Doll

By Eva_kokaze_black (RhblackY@netscape.net )

Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Yoko Matsushita, not to me. 

All comments, etc., are welcome. A sort of continuance/companion of _Idols I have Loved so Long_. Notify before archiving. Muraki angst, H/T ,T/T, and several other pairings. Excuse any Japanese errors; I read YnM in Chinese. ~_~ **WARNING! This chapter has spoilers and pretty graphic violence! You have been warned!

****

Broken Doll- **A Yami no Matsuei Fanfiction**

FOUR

*

__

No. I yearn upward, touch you close,

Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,

Catch you soul's warmth--I pluck the rose

And love it more than tongue can speak--

Then the good minute goes.

-Robert Browning, "Two in the Campagna"

***

He remembered little after that first night in the moonlit room aside from the golden hair. The next morning was white and cool, and Saki was already gone, leaving a slight dent in the sheets. Kazutaka fingered the still-warm fabric and smiled before remembering himself. _He's got a grip on me_, he berated himself as he dug his fingernails into his arm as punishment, _he's using his devilish ways to trick me. He wants to blind me to his evil._ He dabbled at the five bleeding half-moon marks on the white skin on the inside of his elbow and changed into his school uniform. 

*

She was digging her painted claws into his shoulders. "You little demon!" A trickle of warmth was slipping down his chest, and he knew it to be the blood she was drawing. "You little _slut_." She clapped him on his cheeks, first one and then the other. "I should have known what you were doing to him. He's your _brother_! You shamless creature, just like your father...at least your father didn't sleep with his brother. You're nothing like my son, you bastard child!" She gave him a blow that made him stumble and then another that he felt sure had broken something (vitally important, probably, he thought). He could not remember another time when she had been so fierce, so determined, as it seemed, to kill him. Her shrieks faded in his ears as his vision was blotted with sparkling darkness. Some time ago he'd fallen to his knees, and now with a kick he landed heavily on his gut, which took the last of his breath from him. _I don't care,_ he told himself sleepily, _let her have her fun._ She would never break her precious plaything, not after sixteen years of enjoyment. She would never...and he went into the gentle night.

He woke to a shout. It had come from somewhere above, and was not that of his mother. The words were indistinct but the meaning obvious. _Do not touch him, anymore._ He opened his left eye--the other was stiffened with something and throbbed like a brand laid on his face--and saw Saki, who had opened the door, pulling back on Kuroko's arms with waving red-lacqured claws at the ends...his vision wavered and the unreal scene warped in on itself, converging and then another noise, abrupt and painful, woke him again. Astonished by the sheer incrediblity of it, Kazutaka watched his mother's hand plunge into his half-brother's body, her jabbing fingernails like spearheads as she used the momentum of her weight to push her fist in deeper. With a splash of red two fingers emerged, having driven diagonally through diaphragm and brushed against a lung before severing the thin webbing between two ribs. Saki stared at the arm and hand that had impaled him and started, wonderingly, to pull himself free. Kazutaka, who had learned not a little from his father, stumbled to his feet and put a hand behind Saki and another on his mother's arm, keeping down the instinct to pull his brother free. If he did so, Saki would not have time to so much as be surprised before he bled to death. And Kazutaka knew, with great conviction, that no one could kill his demon except himself. 

In a smudged procession he saw the next moments; his mother screaming and trying to pull her arm free while Saki (hysterical now) swayed, moaning, and looked extremely white as blood welled around Kuroko's arm and dribbled into his clothes. Then his father entered, and then in a flurry had taken the wounded boy and his wife to the hospital. Kazutaka was left to finger the rough spots of dried blood on the tatami, until black came and swallowed him.

He got up from the heap he'd fainted in on the floor later, at night. The injured eye was still sealed shut. Outside, in the hallway, he heard the ticking of a distant clock and eight chimes. His legs felt like wet paper, and only by clinging to bits of furniture did he manage to get to his own bedroom (and that evil thing's, he reminded himself). Saki was not there, of course, except in the form of his possessions (quite few). Kazutaka sat on his bed and waited for something he knew to be important but was not sure of, exactly. At fifty minutes past one a pair of headlights paused outside and two doors opened and closed, and then the front door opened. He waited, silently breathing with his hunter's face set like stone. They came nearer and then the door slid open and they stood there, his parents, darkened by the back-light of the corridor. "Kazutaka," said his father, with unwonted gentleness, "Saki is--" 

He lunged. Even in the dimness of the room he could make out his mother's hand, still rimed with faded blood, held stiff as though broken at her side. He would rip it off if he had to. She had killed his demon, and that was beyond anything she'd ever done to him, even her slandering of Ukyou, her beatings, her refusal to feed him or give him water or medicine or any of a thousand other things. His hands were around her neck as she fell and he on top, ignoring her thrashings, only tightening his fingers, tightening, tightening and pretending that it the evil demon she had killed that was under his power. The feeling of dominance was wonderful; his mother's wild golden hair (just like _his_) flailed helplessly soft and her red lips smacked and gasped for air but he relentlessly continued. And then she went as limp as her hair. He did not let go immediately, but when his father gave him a rough pull on the collar and hauled him upright he let go of her neck and heard nothing but the dull knock of her body on the floor. "Kazutaka." He turned and glared, only to be startled by his father's passivity. While he'd waited for their return he had planned on his father, pulling him away from his mother or otherwise hampering his revenge. But the man was perfectly calm, without even the smallest bit of anger, reproach, or even surprise. "I was going to say that Saki will live."

*

"Muraki Kazutaka," read Konoe from a mess of papers, that, despite Tatsumi's fussing and straightening, had refused to pile neatly. "Was a practicing doctor born to a family of physicians. Mother had been diagnosed as a severe narcissic and schizophrenic; possibly had inherited these from her. Father died while was attending medical school. Behavior was savage and unnaturally cruel; probably had been a mercenary assassin to boot." He drew breath to continue but was interrupted by Hisoka. "Don't speak of him in the past tense. He's still alive." The boy drew up a sleeve and displayed the spell-scars that glowed faintly even in daylight. 

"He found us yesterday, in fact," said Tsuzuki. "He talked to us."

"About what?" Konoe's hands had tightened on the papers. Of course he knew of the meeting already, but still--to think that they had been so careless! 

"His past, maybe." Hisoka shook his head. "He didn't get very far before he...he..."

"Got emotional?" 

"Yes." 

The kachou had sent away all the others long ago; the conference room was deserted, and although filled with sunlight seemed eerie. "What else did he say?"

The partners exchanged looks. "He said he'd continue today."

Konoe stiffened. _Whatever manner you deem best_, Enmadaiou had said. "You--shouldn't go." He added, as an excuse, "I've a mission for you." 

*

"Why wouldn't he want us to go?"

"Maybe he thought we'd get hurt." _Like we've always have before._

They were in a cake shop, and Tsuzuki, aside from purchasing the eclairs the kachou had asked for, had also treated himself to a good deal of starry-eyed looks at the pie display before Hisoka had relented (muttering all the while) and bought him a slice. They sat at one of the outdoor tables, made for two. Tsuzuki had consumed his pie to the last crumb almost as soon as he had sat down, and was now eyeing Hisoka's tea. With a sigh it was pushed across to him, and gratefully he gulped at it as though he hadn't drunk for a week. "But still, you'd think it would be more convenient to have us go, when we were going to meet him anyway."

"Mrmfglup," said Tsuzuki, and finished the tea with a satisfied smack. "You're right."

"Besides, he said that he'd 'find us'."

Tsuzuki, whose hand had started to reach into the bag under the table for an eclair, sobered. "I know." He turned his face to the road and watched the cars and pedestrians pass, as though Muraki would appear magically on the sidewalk before them at any moment."What--how do you think he's still alive?"

"I've no idea." Hisoka gripped his hands into fists and stared at them. "He's not a normal human, though."

"Yes." _Inhuman_, thought Tsuzuki, and flinched. 

__

No, said Hisoka in his head, _don't go back there again._ He still looked at his hands, but his mind's voice was anxious. "Let's go," he said aloud, and rose, with Tsuzuki following. _I wonder what Tatsumi-san would have said in my place,_ Hisoka said, making sure that Tsuzuki could not hear. _I wonder how much more Tatsumi-san could give him than me._

*

"In here," said his father, and opened a door. Beyond was a stretch of white, gleaming in contrast to the drab walls of the basement they had passed through. Another door was at the end of the white passage; it was huge, made of stainless steel perhaps. At either side were two padlocks with slits in their sides. His father extracted two cards from his pockets and handed one of them to Kazutaka. "Go to the right." They slid the card-keys through the padlock (something so ridiculously like a science fiction novel that Kazutaka was hard put to to keep from laughing aloud) and the door parted in half. 

Beyond was another white chamber, high-ceilinged and echoing their footsteps. In the center an enormous bundle of cords, wires, and pipes cradled a six-foot tank of reinforced plexiglass, eight inches thick. What he saw inside the tank revolted and excited him at the same time: Saki's head and spinal column, hooked by dozens of cables to various clicking machines that supported life. After a moment of amazement he broke out in choked giggles; his father looked on warily as he went to the tank and put his hand on it, still laughing. It was so gratifying to see his enemy floating helplessly like a dead fish. The golden hair was muted by the liquid of the tank, the eyes shut. If not for his father informing him of the situation earlier, he would have thought the boy dead. "Hello, Saki," he said to the head. Then he realized that the head, albeit entirely unable to survive without the sustenance of the tank and the machines, was _still alive_. Abruptly he stopped laughing and straightened. The head inside the tank opened its terrible eyes and smiled at him, the same leisurely smile. He whispered a curse at it. 

"I'll find him a body, Father."

His father thought it a joke, and smiled (a little too quickly, given the circumstances). "Will you?"

"Yes." He made a vow, and sealed it with his own life. Now he had to find Ukyou and kill Saki. Other men had made more weighty promises to themselves. _I'll find him a body and then kill him._

END FOUR

Notes: Agh. Do I need to change the rating? Then again, this is definitely going to be the most graphic this fic is getting (unless it runs away with me). Why is Enmadaiou so leery about Muraki talking to our wondeful shinigami duo? What exactly will Muraki tell them? Review and I'll try to write the next chapter faster.


	5. FIVE

Broken Doll

By Eva_kokaze_black (RhblackY@netscape.net )

Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Yoko Matsushita, not to me. 

All comments, etc., are welcome. A sort of continuance/companion of _Idols I have Loved so Long_. Notify before archiving. Muraki angst, H/T and several other pairings. Excuse any Japanese errors; I read YnM in Chinese. ~_~ **Warning: Spoilers, lots of angst, somewhat graphic scenes (blood, gore, etc.)

****

Broken Doll- **A Yami no Matsuei Fanfiction**

FIVE

*

__

No. I yearn upward, touch you close,

Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,

Catch you soul's warmth--I pluck the rose

And love it more than tongue can speak--

Then the good minute goes.

-Robert Browning, "Two in the Campagna"

***

He was standing, now, a little light-headed as though he had slept too little when in fact he had dropped to his bed and stayed there the entire night and a good deal of the morning as well, dreaming. In his sleep he had remembered the day when the useless right eye his mother had given him had been removed. After the operation, when his father himself had placed the new artificial one in the socket, he had felt as he did now; airy and only about half alive. The rain of yesterday had cleared, but clouds still hung grey and thick in the sky, occasionally letting a patch of golden rain stream upon a face or a crack in the pavement. 

They were far away from where he stood at the corner of a large road, still among the crossing crowds of people. He sighed and smirked at the marble wall of the bank he was now facing; his hair had caught a spot of the sunlight and gleamed in the stone. Like a blade, the memory of shining yellow hair stunned him, so that he was unaware of being watched until invisible hands were put on him, restraining him. "Who?" He said, a little wildly, knowing that whoever could put such controls on he would necessarily be of enormous power. _Shinigami_...? No, he answered himself. He would have known their presence. The aura of unfamiliar power was a blow almost as hard as the reflection of golden hair in the marble. "Who...?"

Across the street, someone in black beckoned from another pool of sudden light. No shadow lay under the black feet. Muraki, aware that his movement was wholly involuntary, drifted towards the stranger. 

"Muraki Kazutaka?" The voice was strange, very light but definitely male. Then, satisfied with him, it pulled him into a silence. Muraki blinked. Walls of air, shimmering as though infused with a tremendous heat, surrounded them; outside the box the crowds still moved, apparently unaware of the unusual happening. The stranger in black whispered, as though still afraid to be overheard, "Die."

*

In the great throne-room of Enmadaiou, Konoe finished his report and stood. 

"Very good," said Enmadaiou, sounding anything but appeased. "What about Kurosaki and Tsuzuki?"

"Er..." Sheepishly Konoe explained the pastry-shop diversion.

There a was small lull, in which Konoe sweated and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Then a sigh from the empty throne. "We trust that the shikigami you sent was..er, reliable?"

"Of--of course, sir."

"Very good," repeated Enmadaiou, now sounding distracted, "you may go."

After the doors had shut, Enmadaiou sighed. He rose and stepped from his dais to pace on the floor of his hall, a spectacle that would have been rather odd to any observer, for nothing of him could be seen yet his footsteps thumped down the carpeted steps of the dais and onto the floor and led in a trail of small metallic clinkings (the royal shoes apparently very complicated in design) to the great bookshelves. Several large sheafs of papers bound by gold strings fluttered to his invisible hand and then turned and stepped towards the dais. Putting out his right hand, Enmadaiou placed it on a jutting dragon's head gracing the left banister and moved a tiny step back as a panel slid open. He passed through it, the seemingly simple door of wood closing behind him as well as a magical seal, constructed of ancient recondite symbols of secrecy.

Once inside, Enmadaiou strode immediately to the mirror that floated, facing him. Murmuring, he reached his hand through its glass facade and brought out a heavily bound book. Obediently the book opened and fell to the page he desired. It would have begun to read also, but Enmadaiou laid a jewel-heavy hand on it. "We shall read it ourselves." He turned from the mirror and went out of the room, the papers in one hand and the book in the other. Once to his reading-table he laid them side-by-side and undid the strings binding the loose papers. For a few moments he stood over both, reading, and then gasped. "Both of them..." The papers were sent flying back to the shelf and the book vanished back to its sanctum. In the throne room there was only the sound of a man's breathing.

*

They saw him stumbling along the street, seeming to have just emerged from an encounter with several rocks and the bottoms of some rather spiky shoes to boot. Stunned, they watched his meandering approach with great wariness; never before had either seen him in such a condition, except for when Tsuzuki had stabbed him in the basement, bathed in the red glow of Suzaku's flames. And then he had been dying, not injured. It had seemed that he could not _be_ injured. 

"Good morning to you," he said, his smile more like a grimace than ever. 

"What happened to you?" Hisoka tried to conceal his discomfiture with disdain. "You look as though--"

"I know. Thank you, boy." His glare was almost reassuring. "It seems that one of your little servants had gotten loose to wreak havoc on the mortal world." The shinigami looked at one another, perplexed. "We hadn't sent anything..."

"Of course." Muraki snorted. "Then it simply appeared there, waiting for me, by itself." He twitched an eyebrow at them when there was no answer. "It must have been your oh-so-mysterious King." He straightened his coat and shook his head once, in feigned disappointment. "I thought his subordinates would be much more...effective than that measly thing." Neither of his companions remarked on just how close to being "effective" the sending had been.

"Come, trot along," said Muraki presently, having concluded his adjustments (now he appeared perfectly ordinary, except the spots of dust on his immaculate trousers and sleeves and the fact that Muraki was never ordinary). "We need ample time for my story."

*

__

Konoe! The voice swung around a corner, though a door, and into the mind of the Kachou, where it rang as sonorous as though he had heard it in Enmadaiou's own hall. Immediately he dropped to his knees, from centuries of habit, ignoring the bemused look Tatsumi was giving him. "Yes, my lord."

__

It has failed. Konoe's hands, where they were clenched on his legs, sweated. "H--has it, my lord?"

__

Don't be a fool, Konoe.

"Yes, my lord."

__

Go, then.

"Yes, my lord." With a clumsy bow Konoe righted himself and started for the door, only to be stopped short by Tatsumi. "Where are you going, kachou?" _I must be getting paranoid_, though Konoe, a bit panicked, _he sounded like he was about to jump me and keep me here with force._ "B--business, Tatsumi-san."

"Yes?" Tatsumi's glasses flung chips of light, obscuring his eyes under them. "I thought you had five cases to look over _here_." 

"Er..." With a mental jump Konoe remembered that Tatsumi was to be watched for memories of the past as well, and so cast about frantically for an excuse. "I'm going to check on Tsuzuki and Kurosaki-kun. The...eclairs I sent them to find...are rare..." He frowned, confidence returning, at Tatsumi's expression. "I'm the kachou here, Tatsumi-san." With that he pushed forward and went out, breaking into a rather undignified run only after he was out of earshot of the office.

*

The cards were slid through their slots and the chairs were pushed together; the shinigami sat and waited.

"I had told you of Shidou Saki?" They nodded, discomfited by the mere memory. "There's not really much more to it then. My mother killed him." They gave the expected gasps of shock. "Then I killed her." He pushed back the hair that hid his right eye and rolled the hideous piece of machinery and remnants of organic tissue at them. "And I had to have this thing put in." He loathed his eye; even so, he had not bought himself a new, less obvious one. For some odd reason he could not let it go even as he hated it. The shinigami had already known of his matricide and the false eye, and so were not over-startled. He needed to tell them something fresh. "My childhood friend, Ukyou...I didn't find her. Or rather, I haven't found her yet." He opened his mouth to continue but there was a heavy thudding crash from outside the great white doors. 

Instantly the shinigami got to their feet, but Muraki was faster still and was already at the door, his hands put flat against its coolness, glaring at it as though it might bite him. As the three men watched it, another thump came. The door did not so much as quiver. "Who is it?" Muraki glared at the shinigami, accusing. "Who did you tell?" His false eye twitched in its socket as he lunged toward them, snarling. "Was it Enma? That foolish scientist?"

Tsuzuki put a supporting hand on Hisoka's shoulder; they looked nauseated by the lack of decorum in their archenemy's behavior. Presently Muraki drew himself upright, took a heavy breath (his eye still twitching), and seized Hisoka (the closer at hand) and whispered, "Who did you _tell_ ?"

Hisoka swallowed and pulled at Muraki's hand, which had crept around his throat, more than large enough to crush it entirely. "S-stop--let me go!" The hand tightened.

*

It was just like that night when he had though of putting his sixteen-year-old hands around Saki's white neck and wringing it like a fowl's. Except of course he was actually doing it now. He had done to the boy everything he'd fantasized about doing to Saki. After all, they weren't so much different. The hair (although the boy's was darker); the perfect unmarred skin. The eyes were different, though. Even as he choked, the boy's glare was defiant and would be until death, as Muraki well knew. Saki would have pleaded like the innocent wolf in lamb's clothing that he was. The very thought pushed his fingers against the boy's neck harder, an endless vise closing.

His father hadn't died suddenly. It had been expected for at least three years, the withering cancer of his stomach that quickly spread to prostate, colon, lungs...and he had sent for his son at the last moment. Neither had been over-friendly with the other since Kazutaka had gone to Todai and had become intimates with Oriya, of whom him father severely disapproved. When Kazutaka had explained (actually, it had been a phone conversation and he had been practically shouting) that they'd known each other as secondary school students, his father had slammed down the receiver. They had not spoken much since then, much less met.

Of course, Kazutaka was as familiar in this hospital as in his own apartment, having interned and worked here for the years since he graduated.Therefore, he was in no hurry as he went up the flights of stairs to his father's room. On the way he nodded at the usual nurses and a couple of the more friendly interns, but his smile went stiff on his face when someone said, in his head, "Kazutaka. Run, Kazutaka." His mother's voice, laughing as she kicked him. "Run! Go and run!" He turned away from the young intern at whom he'd been smiling and leapt up the stairs three at a time, his coat fulling out behind him.

After rather ruthlessly bashing past a nurse with a full tray-cart and another wheeling her patient around, he arrived at the door of room 402. Patting down his hair assiduously and making doubly sure that his coat fell properly, he knocked and entered.

The man in the bed looked the size of a shriveled Mayan mummy, preserved by rare luck. _It's a surprise the old man lived this long_, Kazutaka said to himself as he chewed the inside of his mouth, disgusted. In the bed, the hollow creased skull opened its eyes a bare thread. "Boy?"

Kazutaka considered leaving immediately but there were a entourage of nurses present, watching the scene tearily; his mother was still screaming at him. _Open your mouth, scum! Can you talk, you idiot child?_ "Father. I'm here."

"Come here, boy." Kazutaka grudgingly complied. Not only was the shrunken body absolutely revolting, it smelled of disinfectant and disease. _Disgusting, disgusting!_ "Make them go away." For a moment Kazutaka thought that the man had finally become delusional, but his father lolled his head feebly in the direction of the squadron of nurses, standing sniffling into their small lacy handkerchiefs. Kazutaka made a shooing motion at them. "But, Muraki-san..." 

"_Go_." They went, hearing his mother in his voice. His father tried to sit, failed, and turned his pleading eyes to his son, who pretended not to see. "Boy, I've things...to say." Kazutaka nodded. "You know, I'm...not your...father?"

"What?" _Monster! Monster! You little bastard monster!_ Cried his mother. 

"I..."A trickle of sweat ran down the jutting cheekbone and onto the white sheets. Kazutaka looked on with a burning desire to put the sheets in the wash. "When I was in school...I found this lab...that I showed you, in the university basement..."

"Yes?" 

"But it was very...old. I had to...repair...it..." The old man coughed and then panted, stuggling to continue. "I rebuilt...the tank...and...used...donated...specimen...to make you..."

"Whose donated specimen?" Kazutaka had gripped the rail of the bed and was clenching and unclenching his teeth, his eyes fixed on his father.

"A very...beautiful man...who...volunteered...and I used...your mother's..." He trailed off into hacking coughs, and widened his reddened eyes as the death-rattle came. 

"Who was the man? _Who_ ?!"

But his father had gone.


End file.
